


you misread my meaning when i met you

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Friends to Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Trans Character, Trapped In A Closet, disaster bisexuals, good ol' fashioned conflict resolution, no real spoilers except how Nathan got his trouble, s2/s3 ish, slow burn emphasis on the burn, trans man Nathan, twenty years worth of repressed feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 18:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20605139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: Duke’s cornered. It’s over. It’s time to rip the band-aid off and just say it. And Nathan can hate him for it and never speak to him again and it can be done. Finished. Finally. Duke’s words all come tumbling out in a rush when he says, “The fishing trip. It seemed like a romantic getaway because it was one. Or—it was supposed to be one.” He laughs, but it rings hollow in the empty room. “I had expensive champagne. Had a plan. I wanted to—god, this is fucking stupid. I wanted to,” he waves his hand, “wine and dine you, y’know? Take some time away.”Nathan stares at him like he's confessed to some kind of crime and Duke wonders if heart-to-hearts have to get worse before they can get better.





	you misread my meaning when i met you

**Author's Note:**

> Anybody still kicking around this fandom? I know I’m a good four years late to the party.
> 
> A quick note on the trans Nathan tag, before we get rolling. As a nonbinary trans person, I’ve interpreted the character as trans since I first started the show. I don’t dig too far into it in this particular fic; there’s a very vague reference to it, but for the most part it’s not really touched on in the story. I decided to tag it as trans Nathan anyway, because even if it’s not really discussed in this fic, it still hugely informs how I write him, how I interpret his backstory, and how he interacts with the world around him. I doubt I’ll ever write a Haven fic with a cis gender Nathan. I’m hoping to explore the concept further in the future, but in the case of this particular fic, it’s a story WITH a trans person, not a story about BEING a trans person. To me, those stories are just as important. So, I included the tag, because I think it matters.
> 
> **Title comes from the song "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" by Elton John

* * *

“Looks like some kind of--? Medusa trouble,” Audrey says, frowning down at the folder of evidence on her desk. At first glance, it looks more like vacation photos than a crime scene: like a sculpture garden full of beautiful marble silhouettes. On closer inspection, the statues are posed oddly—left in strange places, caught in odd spurts of motion, scattered around town in spots that don’t make sense.

When he first saw them, Duke thought it was some kind of art exhibit. Granted, not too many art shows roll through a place like Haven, but the real kicker was how the faces started to look familiar. The first time he noticed it, it was one off Main Street that he swore looked just like a guy he’d served a martini to, the night before. And then he’d damn near run face-first into one stuck right in the doorway of the post office. Then he'd called Audrey.

It’s just he two of them on this one. Nathan’s out helping Dwight with something for the guard, so Duke’s riding shotgun. He’s been working with them for months now, but a part of him still can’t believe that anyone on earth could actually make him willingly walk into a police station in broad daylight. Audrey Parker is really something else.

“You really think it’s Alice McCready? The same woman who can’t even order a drink without ten ‘please and thank you’s?” Duke fidgets with the stack of files on Audrey’s desk and she slides them away from him and drops them in a drawer without looking up.  
  
“I don’t know,” she sighs, reading over the file for the hundredth time. “I mean, she checks all the boxes. Nobody’s seen her—or, at least, seen her and walked away—since this started. And she lost her husband a few weeks ago, so. It’s our best lead, at least.”

For someone who isn’t a local, Audrey understands the troubles better than anyone Duke’s ever known. Although, that might have something to do with the fact that she isn’t in denial about them, or part of the clean-up crew that covers them up. Easier to understand something when you haven't devoted your whole life to making it disappear.

“What’s the husband have to do with it?” Duke asks, settling into one of the wooden chairs against the wall. 

“Loss of a loved one probably triggered the trouble.”

She says it like it’s just a fact, casual as anything, but he feels like he’s playing catch-up with a dangerous idea. Duke gets this look on his face that Audrey can’t read—distant, half focused, like he’s somewhere else all of the sudden. He picks at the hem of his shirt, staring at the floor. “Is it—always a loved one?” When he asks, his voice comes out stilted.

Audrey taps her pencil on the table and thinks of all the troubles they’ve faced so far. “Well,” she hums, “sometimes it’s life or death stuff. Extreme fear, pain. But other than that, it seems pretty consistent. They need something big to set them off and you don’t really get that upset over someone you don’t care about, y’know?”

Something clicks, in Duke: this bone-deep understanding that maybe a part of him had known all along. She sees the moment when something changes, but she isn’t sure what it means and he breezes right past it with a vacant grin.

“Alright,” he says, jumping to his feet a little too quickly. “Let’s go get her.”

* * *

It’s more than a week after they’ve un-Medusaed everyone before Duke has the courage to actually knock on Nathan’s door. He’s been weighing the pros and cons of this confrontation for days and has, essentially, come to the conclusion that—pros equal: virtually none, and cons equal: all of them. And he’s doing it anyway.

Nathan looks even less happy to see him than usual. He’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants, which makes Duke feel strangely overdressed. Except, the t-shirt looks familiar, somehow, and all at once Duke feels like he's sixteen again. Sixteen, and sneaking Nathan his old clothes that he's grown out of. Sixteen and laughing, _tell the chief I said he can go fuck himself_ and watching Nathan grin back at him. Back then, Wuornos Sr. was too bullheaded to let Nathan be the man he was always going to be, and Duke got almost as much joy out of pissing him off as he did seeing Nathan in his oversized flannels.

Duke comes back to himself, realizing it was just his imagination. The shirt isn't one of his--couldn't be, Nathan would have outgrown it years ago, assuming he didn't burn all of them the day Duke left Haven in the first place.

Nathan stands in the open door, watching Duke look at him. He crosses his arms in a way that absolutely isn't at all self-conscious and makes a face when he grumbles, “You couldn’t just call?”

Duke is good at a lot of things. Tact isn’t one of them. He pushes past Nathan, much to Nathan’s dismay, and paces into the entryway before coming to a stop. It only occurs to him now that he had absolutely no plan for how this was supposed to happen: that he charged in half-cocked like always. “So, were you ever going to tell me?” He blurts. No turning back now.

Nathan rolls his eyes, his voice sharp with sarcasm when he volleys back, “Well this is a fun game at ten in the morning. Tell you what?”

This is it. All or nothing.

Duke huffs out a breath and forces his pacing to come to stop. “The reason--that you were so mad at me on the fishing trip.”

Of the million, trillion things that could have possibly come out of Duke’s mouth in that moment, Nathan never would have imaged it would be _that_ one. It takes him a second to collect his thoughts, left sputtering and red-faced and furious. In retrospect, ambushing him first thing in the morning was probably the worst possible way to do this. Duke has, often and spectacularly, throughout their lives, always seemed to choose the worst possible way to do things.

“I was mad at you,” Nathan grits out, “because you _used_ me.”

Duke talks fast because he thinks fast, but also because he’s pretty sure that Nathan is going to drop-kick him out the front door in the next ten seconds if he doesn’t give him a good reason not to. “First of all,” he urges, “that was an accident, but second of all, why would it have made you _that_ mad? I mean--you already expected the worst from me, right?”

Nathan is livid. He pushes forward with a kind of raw fury that Duke might have the good sense to be afraid of if he had any sense at all when it came to Nathan Wuornos. “Oh, I don’t know, Duke,” Nathan snarls, “Maybe because I was only ever as good to as what I could do _for_ you?” He comes to a stop inches away from Duke and his whole demeanor changes. The brick wall comes down so hard, it practically takes a couple of Duke’s fingers along with it. “You know what,” Nathan says, his voice cold, “I’m not doing this.”

Nathan turns on his heel and Duke feels like he's been doused with ice water. Nathan isn't even looking at him, anymore. He's picking up his keys, a jacket, making for the exit. “Lock the door behind you on your way out,” he snaps.

Duke throws out his last Hail Mary the only way he knows how: in one big, messy, disaster of words. Words that he did not prepare beforehand and that sound even clumsier than he feels.

“Audrey says the troubles only get triggered by something traumatic with a loved one.”

As soon as it’s out, he wishes he could un-say it. He squeezes his eyes closes and sucks in a breath through his teeth and takes a couple of steps back to make room for the inevitable explosion.

Nathan is frozen in place with one hand on the doorknob, looking like he might as well be one of those statues they’ve been finding around town. The silence between them feels like a rope around Duke’s neck.

When Nathan finally speaks, it’s with the kind of calm that only comes from fury. “We are not doing this,” he says, words clipped. “You are not heading down this road.”

“Is it true?” Duke asks—pushing, because he always pushes. If he’s already digging his own grave, he might as well dig it deeper.

“Fuck you.”

It’s not a confession, but it might as well be, and there’s something close to surrender in Duke’s voice when he says, “I didn’t know, Nathan.”

All the stillness shatters in an instant; Nathan whirls around to face him, charges into his space. He’s wearing a twisted, wounded expression that Duke’s only seen on him one other time, before. Just the once. “It doesn’t matter if you KNEW,” Nathan shouts. “My _friend_ wouldn’t have done that to me, either! I was just a fucking mark, to you!”

Duke manages to keep calm in spite of himself, because Nathan doesn’t listen once people start screaming and Duke wants Nathan to fucking listen to him. He’s not gentle, exactly, when he speaks, but he’s collected—level. “You and I both know that isn’t true.”

It doesn’t slow Nathan down. He shoves Duke hard enough to slam his back into the wall behind him, and Duke slaps his hands away but resists the urge to shove him back.

“You took me on one of your fucking _jobs—”_ Nathan snarls, but Duke interrupts him.

“I took you fishing. Things just—got out of hand.”

“Out of hand, huh?” There’s so much raw disgust in Nathan’s tone, it makes Duke wish he could melt into the drywall and disappear. “Is that what you call it?”

The exhaustion hits him all at once. They’ve been at each other’s throats for years. It’s starting to feel like even if Duke buried the hatchet, Nathan would just dig it back up. Duke hangs his head with a sigh. “I fucked up.” It’s the closest to real honesty that they’ve gotten in years. “I shouldn’t have asked you to cover for me. I—yeah, I had contraband on board. It’d be pretty hard to find a time when I didn’t, back then. But it was supposed to be an easy run. No Coast Guard, no pirates, no hassle. Shit, the cargo wasn’t even high value. I—” He comes to a stop, letting out a breath and trying to swallow a couple decades worth of pride in the process. “I wanted to take you up the coast—show you the sights. Catch up. That’s it.”

Some of the fire, the rage, drains out of Nathan as Duke talks, but he can’t bring himself to let go of it entirely. If he does, then he’s left with something much smaller and much, much worse. “Yeah,” he spits, but it comes out tired. “Well, look how that turned out.”

Duke nods and cracks a sad smile. “Yeah,” he echoes, “look how that turned out.”

Nathan steps out of Duke’s space, out of his way, and motions for the door. He sounds about as worn out as Duke feels when he says, “Get out of my house, Duke.”

Duke knows he should go—now, before Nathan remembers how angry he is and breaks his nose—but he can’t stop himself from staring just a second before he throws up his hands with a helpless, “I don’t know how I’m supposed to fix this.”

Nathan makes a face and shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn’t look at him. “There is no fixing this.”

Duke nods. He gives Nathan a wide berth when he walks past him toward the front door. He’s almost out when Nathan decides to throw one last barb—one that catches him right in the chest. He says it so quietly, Duke almost doesn’t hear him.

“I wish I never met you.”

It’s strangely easy to pretend it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t cut through him like a knife: strangely easy to turn over his shoulder with a sad, knowing smile and say, “Yeah. You’d be better off,” before he closes the door behind him and it’s all over.

* * *

Things only get worse, from there. Duke and Nathan avoid each other like the plague. The fissure that’s opened up between them cracks wider and wider, until Audrey can’t get them two of them into the same room even when she _needs_ to. Nathan is proud and spiteful, and Duke is tired and hurt, and they’re both much better at hating each other than talking to each other. Always have been.

They’ve been doing this dance as long as Audrey’s known them—longer, actually—but up until now, it was just a kind of background noise that everyone could ignore long enough to actually do their jobs. Now, if she calls Duke to the station, Nathan finds a reason to be anywhere else. If she brings him along on a case, Nathan follows a lead across town. If she asks to meet at the Gull, he picks somewhere else. Nathan balls up and Duke shuts down and Audrey does not have time for the absolute headache they’ve turned her life into.

“Hey,” she snaps one morning, dropping a load of case files onto Nathan’s desk with a bang. “What the hell is going on with you and Duke?”

“Nothing,” Nathan counters, defensive. “Just got sick of making excuses for a selfish, lowlife criminal.”

Audrey shoots him a withering look and he purposefully avoids making eye contact. He’s always hard on Duke, but the last time she heard him talk about him with that much disdain was her first day in town. She thought they’d been getting better, since then.

“Yeah, well that lowlife criminal has saved your life more than once,” she drawls, leaning against his desk. Nathan won’t look at her, even when she tries to push into his line of sight. “Did he _do_ something?”

“You want a list?”

“I mean recently.”

“Not that I can think of,” Nathan grits out in a way that’s so obviously a lie, Audrey doesn’t even bother calling him on it. She just looks down her nose at him and then pats the desk on her way out the door.

“Can you just get your shit together, please? He’s an even bigger pain in the ass when you’re mad at him.”

She lets the door bang closed behind her and Nathan is left alone with an empty office and a stack of paperwork. Paperwork that he can’t even begin to focus on, because he can’t stop thinking about the stupid, sad look on Duke’s face when he left Nathan’s apartment.

When he’s this angry, it’s easy to pretend that he’s hated Duke forever. But it wasn’t always like this. They were friends, once—a lifetime ago. Duke was one of the first kids to pick on him for his trouble, but he was one of the first kids to stand up for him, too.

In middle school—not long after the troubles went away, the first time—Duke roped Nathan into the “trick” part of trick-or-treating. He can’t even remember whose house they egged, but he can remember the thrill of sprinting through the bushes with the cold October air on his face, his lungs burning, and Duke jumping and crowing beside him.

Things got strange when they started high school. Duke looked at him different. Duke was different. Knowing what he knows now, it probably had something to do with the way Duke’s home life collapsed in on itself like its own little black hole. But Nathan didn’t know about that, back then. All he knew was that his friend got mean and cold and good at stealing six-packs from the gas station off Maple Street. They drifted apart for a while.

Then, summer between junior and senior year, Duke knocked on Nathan’s window with a wild-eyed grin and a jar full of weed and they drove out into an empty field and hot-boxed in Nathan’s car. It’s his second most vivid memory of Duke: the weight of an arm around his shoulders and the loud, bright boom of his laugh. He remembers how they hung in each other’s space, breathing the same air, like it was easy. Like they’d always been like that. It was the happiest Nathan had ever seen him, and it lit up this distant corner of his chest in a way he’d just chalked up to the high.

And just like that, just like nothing, they were okay again. And then high school ended. And Duke left town in the dead of the night. And then he came back and ruined everything.

Fuck.

* * *

“I don’t see why he needs to be here,” Nathan complains, well within Duke’s earshot, as they navigate through the storerooms of a long-abandoned shipping depot.

“Yeah, well good thing I didn’t ask you,” Audrey fires back at him. Their footsteps echo for ages in the empty building, creating the illusion of too many sets of feet, too many people. It’s unsettling, especially when Nathan is already on edge.

Dwight brings up the rear and Nathan shoots him a look, trying to get somebody in his corner, but Dwight shakes his head. “Oh no, I’m staying out of this,” he says.

Nathan huffs; he figured Dwight would be easy—not like Duke was exactly his favorite person, either.

Duke keeps his eyes straight ahead, trying to ignore the fact that he can feel Nathan’s glare burning a hole in his back. “Let’s just get this over with,” he says, “and then I’m out of your hair.”

They’d been chasing some kind of animal related trouble all over town. Audrey had seemed pretty convinced, this morning, that this was where the suspect was hiding out, but Nathan can’t see any evidence of anyone having lived here. There’s no food, no clothes, no put-out fires or old blankets. Hell, it seems like even the pier rats stopped searching the place years ago.

“Duke, Nathan, check the storage room. Dwight and I’ll get the office.”

Duke shoots Nathan a look that Nathan isn’t interested in deciphering and they slip inside, splitting up to search around the rows of shelves and crates.

Duke practically hits the ceiling when the metal door crashes shut behind them; the echo travels through the whole place. Before he can even process what happened, Nathan is bolting toward the door with a panicked, “Audrey! Dwight?”

“We’re fine, Nathan!” Audrey’s voice is muffled through the door, but she’s just on the other side of it.

“What happened? I can’t open it.” Nathan yanks on the door, but it just creaks on its hinges and drops a blanket of dust at his feet.

“I think you’re on a time-out,” Dwight jokes, his voice booming in the big empty space.

The face Duke pulls is just a little too exasperated to be a smile. “So much for staying out of this, huh big guy?” he calls, kicking a broken hunk of two-by-four across the floor just to hear it skitter on the concrete.

Nathan looks like he’s about to blow a gasket. He pounds on the door, shouting, “There’s a trouble we don’t know _anything_ about, you NEED me. Let me OUT!”

Audrey sounds completely sick of his shit when she calls back, “Actually, it’s Teddy Simmons. He’s a fifth grader who can talk to animals, and Dwight and I can absolutely handle it.”

Duke actually laughs, even if it’s more from shock than anything else. “She already solved it,” he says and Nathan whirls on him with a nasty glare. It’s only for a second, though, before he’s back to kicking the door.

“AUDREY. LET ME _OUT.”_

If Duke didn’t know better, he’d swear he could hear a smile in Audrey’s voice. “Not a chance, champ. Listen, you two are in there for the next couple hours whether you like it or not. Frankly, I don’t give a shit if you talk it out. Sit there and pout for all I care. But when I come back, you two are going to at least be civil enough to work a case together. And if not, we will just shove a couple granola bars under the door and leave you there all night. Sound good?”

“NO,” Nathan snarls, but they can already hear the sound of Dwight and Audrey’s footsteps getting further away.

“Bye, boys!” Distantly, they hear the clang of another door and then the whole place is silent.

Duke drops heavily down onto one of the storage crates. “So,” he sighs. “We talking?”

_“No,”_ Nathan snaps, practically before Duke’s even finished speaking.

Duke nods, clicking his teeth. “Gonna be a long night.”

* * *

They’ve spent a good 45 minutes in silence—Nathan pacing like he’s trying to wear a hole in the floor, Duke playing playing Tetris on his phone—before Nathan whirls around and jabs a finger in Duke’s face and snarls, “You know, you’ve got a lot of fucking nerve.”

In retrospect, dramatically throwing his arms into the air and cheering, “Eey! He speaks!” was absolutely not the right reaction to that.

Nathan slaps his hands out of the air and says, “No, shut up, I’m talking now. You show up at my house, completely uninvited—”

Duke’s tone is light when he points out, “I don’t know when I’ve _ever_ actually been invited—”

Nathan just talks over him. “You show up, and you start talking about the worst day of my fucking life—”

At this point, Duke isn’t really arguing so much as babbling. “Frankly, Nathan, I think we can both agree that it’s top five at worst—”

“And you think you have the fucking _right_ to tell me why it happened—”

“I wasn’t telling you, I was _asking_ you—”

“YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WERE FUCKING DOING.”

Nathan is panting, flushed red, on the verge of hyperventilating and Duke just stares at him in shock. The quiet settles around them like a lead blanket. The sheer weight of it feels oppressive. In that moment, it doesn’t matter that the storeroom is huge and empty; Duke’s never felt more claustrophobic.

He’s careful, although not exactly tactful, when he slowly says, “I don’t think… that you’d be this angry at me if I was wrong.”

Nathan’s voice comes out cold and quiet and furious when he hisses, “I hate you.”

“You didn’t used to.” He meets Nathan’s rage with a look of utter defeat. They’re talking themselves in circles again.

It’s the look on Duke’s face that gets under his skin the most. “Why the hell do you care?” He snaps, returning to his pacing because otherwise he’s going to climb out of his own damn skin. “Is this fun for you?”

Duke rolls his eyes, not that Nathan is looking, and sighs, “No, Nathan. This is extremely not fun for me, actually.”

* * *

It’s another hour before either of them speaks.

Seeing as his phone died about thirty minutes ago, Duke’s had a while to wrestle, undistracted, with the reality of the situation they’re in. He understands that if there’s any shot of rebuilding this bridge, he’s going to have to be the one to do it. It’s a gamble, though. Nathan is fucking livid; even after an hour in silence, he hasn’t stopped moving. He paces or he tries to break down the door or he picks paint off the walls.

Sure, there’s a chance Duke actually gets through to him. There’s also a chance—a big one—that Nathan hates the honesty more than he hated being asked questions. Seems like, no matter what he says, Nathan hates him for it.

He’s heard people say that expressing your feelings is brave, but that’s not how he feels when he starts talking. He feels like the biggest coward alive. After all, he’s kept it to himself this long. Speaking it into the quiet room doesn’t feel like bravery, it feels like surrender: like the last act of a doomed man.

He’s hunched over with his elbows propped on his knees, eyes on the floor, when he says, “Do you want to know why I took you on that fishing trip?”

Nathan kicks one of the shelves, although not as hard as Duke expected, and snaps, “Let me guess—so you could have a free pass out of trouble?”

He ignores the jab. He’s already told Nathan that wasn’t the reason; repeating it won’t make him listen.

“I went all over, after high school. Europe. Canada. South America. I was so fucking sick of this backwards town. I was sick of—” His voice catches in his throat a little, but he pushes past it. “I was sick of being told who to love and how to live and what kind of man I was supposed to be. Figured I’d hoist anchor and never think of this place again.”

When he looks up, he’s a little shocked by the intensity of focus Nathan’s leveled at him. For all his unhappy body language, he looks like he’s actually listening instead of constructing a new insult to sling Duke’s way. For some reason, Nathan paying attention to him feels worse than Nathan ignoring him. He swallows the lump in his throat and turns back to his hands and laughs to break the tension (not that it works.)

“Listen,” he says, “I’m not gonna sit here and tell you you were the only one I missed. Despite my _very_ best efforts, I—actually made a lot more friends in this town than I thought I had. Bill, for one. James.”

Nathan interrupting him was inevitable, really. There’s no way he could stand it to just listen. “You didn’t fucking miss me,” he scoffs.

For the first time all day, Duke’s the one who turns a sharp look on Nathan. He’s the one with the heat in his voice when he barks, “Hey. It’s my turn to talk.”

The interruption flusters him. He runs a hand through his hair while he tries to refocus on what he was saying—what he was trying to say. Even the mask of frustration isn’t enough to keep the next part from coming out of his mouth sounding defeated. “I thought about you. Whether you were okay. If this place was… treating you right. The Rev was such a fucking nightmare to you. And your dad... I—kept wishing I’d taken you with me.”

“Well, aren’t you a saint,” Nathan drawls, all sarcasm and disbelief.

“Can you stop being such a prick for ten goddamn seconds,” Duke finally snaps, even if a part of him regrets it as soon as it’s out of his mouth. He runs a hand over his face and tries to collect himself. “The fishing trip,” he says, refocusing—pushing, because this is the hardest part. This is the part he doesn’t know how to say. “It was supposed to be—a gesture.”

“A gesture.”

“Yes, a _fucking gesture_, Nathan!”

It says a lot about Duke—specifically, about the love-struck disaster of a train wreck he’s spent the last couple decades slow-motioning into—that he almost likes it when Nathan bickers with him. Half the time it’s like pulling teeth to get Nathan to say two goddamn words to him. For better or worse (almost certainly for worse,) this is the most they’ve talked to each other in weeks.

It’s just like the stupid tacks. Was it a shitty thing to do? Absolutely. Was it an extremely thinly veiled attempt to get Nathan to talk to him? Definitely. Did it work? Without a fucking doubt.

He’s cornered. It’s over. It’s time to rip the band-aid off and just say it. And Nathan can hate him for it and never speak to him again and it can be done. Finished. Finally. Duke’s words all come tumbling out in a rush when he says, “It seemed like a romantic getaway because it was one. Or—it was supposed to be one.” He laughs, but it rings hollow in the empty room. “I had expensive champagne. Had a plan. I wanted to—god, this is fucking stupid. I wanted to,” he waves his hand, “wine and dine you, y’know? Take some time away.”

Nathan doesn’t do anything by halves. Either he’s pacing with enough manic energy to make Duke anxious by proxy, or he’s so unbelievably still it’s like he’s made of stone. This time, it’s the latter and he’s staring at Duke like he’s grown a second head—like he’s confessed to some kind of crime.

“You’re lying,” Nathan says, after a quiet that stretches on so long it’s unbearable.

Duke’s exhausted. He tips his head up to look at Nathan and sighs, “what the hell would I get outta that, Nate?”

“You always have an angle,” he snarls, but his voice is softer than before—more fragile than furious.

Duke takes a deep breath and makes a show of lifting up his arms and turning his hands forwards and backwards when he says, flatly, “Nothing up my sleeves. Nothing in my hat. No tricks.”

If he didn’t know better, he’d swear Nathan was shaking. He looks away, a—kindness, maybe. A gift of privacy. “You wanted to know why I asked,” Duke murmurs, “That’s why.”

For a while, Nathan says nothing and Duke has just about resigned himself to the idea of another hour of being stonewalled, when he finally speaks up. “So, why’d you do it?” He asks, jaw tight. “Why’d you ask me to do your dirty work for you, if you--" The word sticks in his throat so he skips it, rewords it, "If you cared about me?”

It’s the closest thing to progress they’ve made all night. Duke looks at him and finally stands up, but Nathan matches his step forward with a step back, so he gives up on trying to get any closer. “I was stupid,” he says, honest. He shoves his hands in his pockets when he realizes he has no idea what to do with them. “I didn’t think about how it would sound or—y’know. The position it’d put you in. I don’t know, Nate, it was a… habit. Don’t exactly see a lot of honest men in—imports.”

Maybe Nathan doesn’t believe him. Maybe he does believe him, and it just doesn’t matter. Either way, he doesn’t feel like he’s gotten any further away, but he certainly doesn’t feel any closer.

“For what it’s worth,” Duke says on a sigh, only to correct himself to, “if it’s worth anything—I’m sorry. Probably should have said that from the beginning.”

“I haven’t felt anything in three years,” Nathan hisses, voice low, “All because you—” He drags to a halt and lets out an awful laugh. “All because you did something _‘stupid.’_ And I’m supposed to? What? Forgive you for that?”

The worst part is that Nathan’s right. Duke runs a hand through his hair and can’t look him in the eye. “I didn’t know it was gonna happen. I didn’t—”

“Mean to?” Nathan finishes for him. All Duke can do is shoot him a disappointed look.

“Yeah,” he admits softly, “That.”

They don’t talk again for a long time, but Nathan finally sits down and stops pacing. Duke doesn’t exactly consider that a win, but—it’s a start.

* * *

“Think Audrey forgot about us?” Duke asks around hour three.

Nathan makes a sound suspiciously close to an actual laugh and shakes his head. “I think Audrey knows us well enough to know we weren’t gonna get anywhere in three hours.”

Duke laughs, too. “Yeah, well—I hope she gets back soon, because I’d really rather our little bonding session not include me pissing in the corner.”

Nathan makes a face, but it’s more amused than disgusted. “Yeah, you and me both.”

Things feel almost normal, for a second. Easy. Enough that Duke wonders if it makes him an idiot for ruining it by asking, “If I’d told you how I felt before the Coast Guard showed up… D’you think it would have made it better or worse?”

“Worse,” Nathan says, without so much as a pause, but for once there’s no real bite behind it. “Definitely worse.”

“Yeah,” Duke sighs, “that’s what I thought.”

“Why tell me at all?” Nathan finally asks. He settles back against the wall and watches Duke’s expression.

“Oh, you know me,” Duke hums, “Just nostalgic, I guess.”

Nathan rolls his eyes. “Nostalgic my ass,” he says, but doesn’t press the issue. They’re both quiet for a moment before Nathan looks at him and says, “We’re not gonna kiss and make up. I don’t trust you, Duke.”

He nods. There’s a ghost of a smile on his face when he says, “Honestly, I’d just settle for you easing up on the whole arresting me thing, once in a while.”

Nathan huffs a small laugh and says, “Depends. You still smuggling?”

“Would you believe me if I told you no?”

“Not really, no.” Nathan’s grinning in spite of himself and Duke can’t help but smile back.

“Then, nope,” Duke hums, “Clean as a whistle.”

Nathan chuckles and shakes his head. He’s spent a lot of years seeing the worst in Duke Crocker. It’s not the kind of fracture you repair overnight, but—if Duke is willing to meet him in middle, then Nathan’s willing to budge. Just a little.

“It would have happened eventually,” he says, finally, looking over his shoulder at Duke. “My trouble. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been something else.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Duke agrees. “Still wish it hadn’t been me.”

“Yeah,” Nathan admits softly. “Me too.”

* * *

Finding Teddy Simmons was easy. Convincing Teddy Simmons to stop organizing small armies of squirrels to terrorize the locals—now that was a little bit harder. It wasn’t exactly the most dangerous case Audrey’s ever worked, but it was one of the more frustrating. It didn’t help that Dwight spent the whole time only barely managing to keep a straight face and not being helpful at all.

Four hours and a very pouty fifth grader later, and the strange animal behavior in town was finally all cleared up. They were free to head back to the depot to check on the boys.

“Knock, knock,” Audrey singsongs as she swings open the door. “How we doin’?”

She’s a little bit shocked to find the two of them sitting next to each other. They don’t look like they’re getting along, exactly, but the tension has drained out of the room and they both look—calmer, maybe. Like some knot that had been pulling tighter finally twisted loose.

Duke levels a weary expression on Dwight and drawls, “What, was the eleven-year-old too tough for you, Sasquatch?”

“Hey,” Audrey teases back, “I’m the one asking the questions. Can we work together without killing each other, again? Or at least an acceptable amount of killing each other?”

“Yeah,” Nathan says, shooting a glance at Duke. “I think we can handle that.”

She grins and leans against the doorway. “Are you lying so I’ll let you out?”

“I do REALLY need to pee,” Duke jokes, except it isn’t really a joke and she can see that on his face.

Audrey laughs and steps out of the way, motioning for the two of them to follow her. “Alright, assholes, you’re free to go.”

It’s probably an accident—or, not an accident, but a habit? Something subconscious? Definitely not intentional, definitely nothing to read into, but Nathan claps him on the back on their way out the door and Duke can’t help standing just a little bit taller.

* * *

Summer in Haven almost makes all the weird shit worth it. It’s an easy 70 degrees, wind coming off the ocean, sun bright and warm and only sometimes blocked by the clouds. Nathan only stopped by the Rouge because Audrey asked him to pick something up from Duke.

As he rounds the corner up the pier, Duke tosses him a fishing rod that he only just barely manages to catch. “C’mon, let’s go fishing.”

With the sunlight beaming out from behind Duke’s shoulder, he’s awfully hard to look at. Nathan squints and tries to hand the fishing rod back. “I’ve got responsibilities here, Duke. Can’t exactly disappear for a week.”

“Just a day trip, this time. Haven won’t burn to the ground if you leave for a day.” He hops down off the deck and Nathan can finally see him without the sun in his eyes. “Actually, Audrey gave the all-clear for the whole weekend.”

Nathan glances down at his feet, but not quite fast enough to hide his smile. “So, Audrey’s in on this too, huh?”

Duke’s just a little bashful when he admits, “It was Audrey’s idea, actually.”

“So--what are you smuggling, this time?”

Duke puts his hands up. “Seriously, just fishing. No funny business. Nothing illegal on board… well, nothing that I didn’t already have—nothing that the Coast Guard would check for.” He makes a face, fully braced for Nathan to tell him to go fuck himself.

But Nathan laughs. “Yeah, alright.”

Duke lights up. “Yeah,” he echoes, beaming as he tucks his hands into the pockets of his sweater. “Alright.”

* * *

Short of Nathan and Audrey, Duke loves the ocean the best. It was his first love—the only place that felt safe when “home” didn’t. He and Bill and Geoff used to sit by the water for hours when they were kids, even if Geoff complained about it half the time. And then Duke had made something of a point of alienating pretty much everyone around him, and then he started coming here to drink. A lot. Maybe too much. No sense dredging up the past, though. Not when things are looking bright for the first time in a long time.

Duke likes the actual fishing a lot less than he likes the excuse to sit next to Nathan and make him laugh. Once upon a time—lifetimes ago, maybe—Duke was good at making him laugh. It’s harder now; Nathan’s not really even much of a smiler, these days, but Duke’s willing to take the soft huffs and exasperated grins as some kind of victory.

They’ve been out a few hours, the Rouge rocking gently beneath them, when Duke comes back from below deck with a couple cold beers and passes one to Nathan.

Nathan glances first at the bottle, then at Duke and teases, “What, no expensive champagne this time?”

Duke bites down on an embarrassed grin when he sits beside him. “I promised no contraband,” he laughs, nudging Nathan’s knee with his own. “The champagne was _definitely_ contraband.”

“That’s a shame,” Nathan says, with something playful coloring his voice that Duke doesn’t dare read too far into.

“Wouldn’t want to get you in trouble,” Duke jokes, taking a drag of his beer and propping his feet up on the railing. They’re supposed to be fishing, but he’s more interested in watching the water (mostly because if he doesn’t watch the water, he’s going to get caught watching Nathan, instead.)  
  
“Never used to bother you,” Nathan fires back, but there’s mischief to his tone—something bright and friendly just beneath the surface of it.

Duke shoots him a broad smile. He feels a little manic, a little nervous in the best way. He hasn’t felt like this since he was sixteen and his first smuggling job was smuggling a gangly Nathan Wuornos out his bedroom window. The trick was to get him out of the house and into Duke’s car without Garland noticing. Garland used to call him a bad influence, but Duke had always had a soft spot for how awake and alive Nathan looked when he dragged him into some new scheme. He’d have done anything to see Nathan like that. “You _liked_ trouble,” he teases.

Nathan shrugs; he looks away from Duke, out into the water. Still, his voice comes out level and honest when he admits, “I liked you.”

Duke tries to ignore the flare of anxious hope in his chest. His words come out just a little shy when he replies, “Hey. That’s my line.”

“You know,” Nathan says, and there’s a confidence behind it now. No more walking on eggshells or talking around the thing. “It’s not like you needed fancy champagne. Could’ve just—talked to me.”

Duke’s always been better at ducking behind humor than talking about the important things. “Yeah, but since when do I do anything the easy way?”

“You don’t.”

Duke’s been looking away—at the water, at his beer, at his feet, anything to keep from having to look at the man next to him. When he does finally turn his way, it’s startling to find the intensity of Nathan’s gaze on him. It sends a thrill down his spine that has nothing to do with the chill in the air.

For someone who’s put so much effort into pretending he doesn’t care what Nathan thinks, he’s sure spent a lot of his life trying to impress him, one way or another.

When Nathan looks at him like that, he forgets everything he was going to say. He thinks instead of the night he left Haven, the first time: knocking on Nathan’s window in the middle of the night and almost, almost, almost asking him to come with him. It’s what he meant. What he had said, instead, was_ I’m leaving_. And they'd argued about it at first, but in the end, what Nathan said was,_ Fine. Go._ It had never been a goodbye, because Duke didn’t know how to make it one. Saying goodbye meant admitting he was giving something up. He didn’t want to leave anything behind in this town. He wanted to turn his back and sail away from it forever.

Maybe Nathan wasn’t the reason he came back to Haven, but he sure had something to do with why he stayed. And now he’s here, on Duke’s boat, out in the ocean with the breeze on their faces and he’s looking at him with this focus that draws Duke in like a magnet.

“So, what’s the easy way?” Duke asks, even when his throat feels dry and his voice comes out hoarse.

“The what?” Nathan looks a little—unfocused. Like he’s been thinking about something else.

Duke’s eyes drop to Nathan’s mouth, just for a second. Nathan notices. “You said I don't do things the easy way. What’s the easy way, this time?”

The quiet that stretches out between them seems enormous. Like a gulch too broad for anyone to bridge. But Nathan reaches across the space between their bodies until he can grip the front of Duke’s shirt. Duke knows what’s happening in a logical sort of way—knows what it means: the hand in shirt, the way Nathan’s gaze hangs on his mouth, the absolute silence that’s settled between them. It still feels surreal: like he’s watching it in between the flashes of a strobe light, like reality isn’t quite moving at the speed it’s supposed to be.

One minute, Nathan is a world away from him. The next, Duke can feel his knuckles against his chest. Another flash, he’s leaned—been pulled—across the arms of their chairs and into Nathan’s space. Meeting Nathan halfway has always been more like meeting him three quarters there and this is no different. Nathan pulls him all the way over, but he doesn’t do anything once he’s got him there.

Nathan’s voice comes out raspy and distant when he whispers, “Easy as it’s gonna get,” just a few inches away from Duke’s mouth.

Duke can take a hint.

Maybe it balances out that Nathan can’t feel, because Duke’s overwhelmed enough for the both of them. He kisses cautious and wanton—years of things left unsaid getting tangled up between them. Nathan watches; Duke’s different this close. Softer. Older. Watching his lashes, the crest of his cheek, the line of his brow, Nathan almost can’t remember why he carried a grudge for so long.

Duke doesn’t kiss like someone who wants to hurt him.

Nathan breaks away with a gentle, if exhausted, “I’m sick of being angry at you.”

Duke looks—dazed, like he’s swimming back to the surface. He searches Nathan’s expression for a moment before croaking, “Um. I’m assuming that’s rhetorical, but uh—yeah. Me… too.”

Nathan laughs. Duke’s remembering how much he likes the sound.


End file.
